Just A Boy
by FranDS44444
Summary: Wasn't this what his family had been waiting for? Wasn't this what he, Draco Malfoy, always wanted?  But then, why did he feel so scared? Why did he feel so alone and confused? Settled during the HBP.


**This is my first Harry Potter one-shot. I've had this one-shot in my mind for a while until I finally decided to write it down. I hope you like it and please Read and Review! :)**

**I don't own Harry Potter and I'm not J.K. Rowling!**

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><p>Draco grabs the cabinet's knob tight with his pale hand. He then presses his forehead on the cold hard door for a few seconds which seem hours. He can't move, and really, he doesn't want to either.<p>

The room is eerie quiet and dark. The only sound is his ragged breathing and his dry sobs.

He is so confused and helpless.

He isn't the Draco Malfoy everybody knows of. He is just a ghost, a shadow of what he had been once.

His pale skin is paler than normal and the dark bags under his eyes makes his grey eyes once full of life look dull. He is thinner and weaker but that is the price he has to pay to keep doing what he has to.

What he is doing is what he once thought was all he wanted to.

This is what he has prepared himself for years, practically since the day he was born.

Since he was a child he has admired his father and the circle he belonged in. He had always wanted to be like his father when he grew up and fight for what he believed in.

He has always dreamed to serve the Dark Lord and show once and for all, Saint Potter, where he belonged in.

And then the big moment came, the moment when he joined his father.

His dark mark is proof of it.

He had imagined his parents would be proud and happy but all he got was a terrified expression on his mother's face and a cold, vacant look in his father's eyes.

Wasn't this what his family had been waiting for? Wasn't this what he, Draco Malfoy, always wanted?

But then, why does he feel so _scared_? Why does he feel so alone and confused? Why the hairs of his neck stand whenever he thinks about the mark burning on his forearm and the mission he has to carry out?

Draco sucks in a deep breath of air. He feels breathless and lifeless. He feels the air in his lungs isn't enough. He feels suffocated by the weight of responsibility on his shoulders and the clock ticking away every precious second he has.

He is too young. Oh so young.

He had been naive and just a child when he thought that being a Death Eater would be the best that could ever happen to him.

It wasn't.

At first he liked to impress his so called friends telling them how he, only sixteen years old, was now in the Dark Lord's inner circle. He loved being the center of attention and feeling superior. After all, he was raised thinking that Malfoys were superior to anyone.

He hadn't realized though, there was one person that was superior to him and had the power to make him do anything.

Lord Voldemort

When he got his mark, he was deadly scared. Not because of the pain it inflicted but because of the dark and sinister smile the Dark Lord gave him and what Draco discovered. Draco never thought that such cruel and horrible things were even real until he got the mark.

He had to hear scream after scream, and try to keep his lunch in. The tortures that Death Eaters practiced would forever be etched in his young mind.

Unforgivable curses were used as often as simple spells like 'Alohomora'.

But that is the price that comes being a Death Eater and Draco has to deal with it.

He has no _choice_, no _option_.

It is either that or death.

A slow, painful and gruesome death

And this is where he is now. He is following the Dark Lord's orders, paying the price of his father's mistakes in order to stay alive.

This is the Dark Lord's vengeance against his father but Draco had to pay. He had to pay suffering night after night knowing the faith of his parent's lives rested on his own hands. Knowing that he will have to kill the greatest wizard the world has ever known, not knowing how and not daring to.

It is just a show after all and he was supposed to fail.

Everybody knew he was supposed to fail so that the Dark Lord could just kill him and his parents.

After all, who is he to stop him? Who is _he_?

He isn't important to anyone. He isn't Harry bloody Potter or Dumbledore.

He is just a young boy, doing the wrong things to save his miserable life.

He is a child who had wanted to grow up too fast and introduced into a world he wasn't prepared to face, to know.

But nobody understands that. Nobody knows what he is going through. He is more than an arrogant pureblood boy. He is also a scared young boy who feels so alone. Who has always felt alone.

Draco grips the knob harder and lets out a dry sob.

Nobody knows how he feels and no one ever will.

He glances at the ticking clock, making him aware of the time he has left.

He knows he only has to twist the knob and everything will change.

In a few seconds, he will betray everything he knows. Everything he believes in. Everything he loves and grew up to know as his home.

He doesn't want to do this. Oh merlin, he _doesn't_.

But he doesn't have any other _choice_.

After all, he knows he is just a coward. A bloody loathsome coward.

Draco closes his eyes tightly, taking a deep breath. This is the last time before he becomes a murderer, scum, a traitor. He bits back a sob. He has to be strong now. Strong for his mother and for his father too.

He just wants to savor this few seconds as what he is, a boy.

He is just a boy.

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><p><strong>Like it? Hate it?<strong>

**I became inspired with this when I Narcissa tells Snape, Draco is just a boy in the Half-Blood Prince. **

**So, Review? :)**


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